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What is a Whole Foods Plant-based (WFPB) Diet?

What’s the Science Behind It?

What are the Benefits?

And, What Should I Actually Eat on a Daily Basis?!

Whether you’re an experienced WFPB enthusiast, or heard enough to be curious, this page is meant to provide an overview of the “best of our knowledge” of WFPB benefits and science, as well as practical eating guidelines.

The Sciences Favoring WFPB

There are four relevant, big, and distinct scientific domains that each have a “preponderance of evidence” in favor of a whole food plant-based (WFPB) diet being the healthiest diet for humans:

Centenarian and longevity studies: In the five recognized “Blue Zones” on Earth, i.e. places with the highest percentage of centenarians, the overwhelming dietary pattern shared by those longest-living peoples is 95% to 100% whole food plant-based. Despite their wide separation of geography, from Okinawa to Sardinia to Loma Linda, Blue Zones diets share commonalities: they are especially rich in beans, and whole grains or root vegetables. For more details see the BlueZones website, which also links to books and research articles.

Epidemiology/observation studies: From following the demographic, health, and outcomes data for large groups of people over years, WFPB diets are tied to lower risks of disease. Prominent examples include the Adventist Health Study 1 and 2 (additional summary), the Nurses’ Health Study, and The China Study. Population migration studies can be especially revealing, e.g. chronic disease risks (heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s) can differ by 10× or more for the same ethnic group members living in the US vs elsewhere, strongly suggesting that diet and lifestyle far outweigh genetics, as risk factors.

Clinical research and interventions: The carefully planned and closely monitored use of nutrition-based interventions to treat diseases, provides some of the strongest evidence in favor of WFPB diets. In clinical studies, particularly the “gold standard” of randomized clinical trials having a control group, WFPB diets have been repeatedly shown to reverse severe heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, and obesity. This domain provides the key evidence backing “evidence-based” medicine and nutrition.

Biochemistry: A well-balanced WFPB diet is most aligned with growing knowledge of healthy biochemistry in the body, especially our need for antioxidants, phytonutrients, and fiber — only available from plant foods. Those needs are in addition to the familiar macronutrients (carbs, protein, fat) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals). Plants-only nutrients play vital roles in our health, at all levels from molecules, to cells, to larger body systems (e.g. blood circulation, digestion, nervous system) and organs (heart, brain, gut and microbiome, etc).

These are the broad general “pillars” supporting whole foods plant-based diets, but there are many more specialized studies that are the “bricks” within each pillar.

We can further organize those WFPB “bricks” by their benefits to us, which is what we’ll classify and list below.

One more important note before moving on: these sciences are applied by a rapidly growing community of healthcare professionals, specializing in lifestyle medicine — which primarily relies on the proven benefits of a WFPB diet to help people heal themselves, and thrive.

Top Benefits of WFPB Eating

Prevent & Reverse Disease

It’s remarkable how a WFPB diet helps broadly prevent or alleviate so many chronic diseases. That’s likely because a WFPB diet can quickly and dramatically cut the top risk factors: chronic inflammation, excess oxidation, and toxic levels of fat and sugar. Those risks all shoot up on a “modern” diet high in animal products’ saturated fats, and processed foods.

A WFPB diet can make a big difference in most of today’s top chronic illnesses:

Besides the major diseases above, many other chronic diseases such as hypertension or auto-immune disorders can be improved or reversed with a WFPB diet. Which altogether, shouldn’t be too surprising: Food is by far our most extensive and closest contact with the outside world, so once the bad stuff is cut out, and we only eat good stuff, a billion years of bodily survival instincts kick-in to support our health.

Thinking more generally, health is not only the absence of disease, but a general wellness and thriving. To make a general claim that the WFPB diet is the healthiest is difficult because WFPB ingredients and meals vary widely, as do the actual daily lifestyles of those adhering to WFPB. Collecting a wide array of health metrics for a large group of people with many different eating patterns would also be quite expensive (e.g. The China Study), though future technology may enable that.

Lose & Manage Weight Easily

One can lose excess weight in the short-term on a very wide variety of diets, but what matters is keeping the weight off, i.e. long-term, healthy, and ideally easy weight management, where we’d simply eat delicious and nutritious foods until we feel full.

That need for easy long-term weight management implies meals that are nutrient-dense: delivering all the macro, micro, and phyto nutrients needed for good health, while avoiding excess energy-density, i.e. avoiding calorie-rich foods that are nutrient poor and bypass our natural satiety senses (because they have no fiber), like saturated fats from meat and dairy, oils, processed sugar, etc. From epidemiology and clinical research, plant-based diets best fit those requirements.

Eat Freely & Indulge Guilt-Free

When you eat minimally processed whole plant foods, you can generally indulge yourself in a huge variety of delicious AND maximally nutritious foods: thousands of different fruits, vegetables, beans and legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds, mushrooms, and many different herbs and spices. The number of ways to prepare, cook, and combine WFPB meals is practically unlimited.

Even without using any sugar, oils, or salt (SOS-free), new techniques and recipes are appearing every day, from scores of cultural backgrounds. Deliciously decadent yet healthy recipes abound, like roasted sweet potato wedges dipped in lemon and tahini topped hummus. Or dark raw cacao raspberry cashew-cream “cheeze” cake. There are far more WFPB options than salads, that you can enjoy guilt-free, because they’re truly good for you, and you can rely on your body to signal when it’s had enough.

Improve Attractiveness: Skin, Scent, & Sexual Health

Besides the sciences discussed so far, there’s a science of attractiveness — and the effect of plant-based diets on attractiveness confirm evolutionary predictions: healthy mates can be seen and smelled as such.

Increase Energy

Despite “energy” being a fundamental physical concept like space and time, it’s not easy to measure directly in the human body. Yet every day we all have a subjective sense of our energy levels, and that impacts every aspect of life, from mood to alertness to productivity.

Our food choices obviously play a primary role in our energy, and unlike air, we have choices. Assuming enough calories, a plant-based diet can easily lead to a sense of increased energy, in all timeframes:

In the longer run, on a WFPB diet you have plenty of glycogen stored in your muscles and liver to keep you going; your blood is less sticky/thick so circulates better through cleaner arteries; abundant plant antioxidants clean up the inevitable free radicals throughout your body (especially in your brain); and there’s little or no chronic inflammation that taxes your system.

When a clean, pure, whole food plant-based diet fuels the body so well, is it any wonder you feel good and energized?

Sleep Better

There are many reports and comments from WFPB newcomers that their sleep duration and quality improve on a plant-based diet. Not only does good sleep provide immediate daily benefits, but it can also help lower long-term disease risks, e.g. for heart disease and dementia.

While some of us can wait for careful nutrition and lab studies to untangle the myriad benefits of plant foods on sleep, most of us are happy to simply enjoy another major benefit of plant-based eating.

Longevity

The evidence from Blue Zones diets being 95-100% WFPB, and epidemiology studies with large plant-based groups living disease-free longer, makes the high-level case for greater longevity from WFPB eating (on average).

That's a Ton of Benefits! So What Should I Actually Eat??

Let’s Use the Highest Standard of WFPB Nutrition

Within the WFPB community, there are many different guidelines, with very similar advice: eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, beans, and herbs. Eat a wide variety of colors to get the full range of phytonutrients. Eat broccoli. Etc. etc.

But being nutrition nerds at LeafSide, we wanted the most evidence-based eating plan, where as many specific ingredients as possible have direct clinical intervention evidence, and biochemistry-level explanations of WHY a food (group) is good for us.

Thankfully, Dr. Greger and his dedicated army of volunteers at the non-profit NutritionFacts.org provide the whole world with that level of evidence-based nutrition science. To find the most reliable and actionable nutrition advice, they read the tens of thousands of nutrition research papers published every year “so that busy people like you, don’t have to.”

The best findings are posted online at NutritionFacts as short, 2-5 minute videos — well over 2,000 videos now. Then Dr. G distilled his decades of experience and his thousands of videos from NutritionFacts into one global bestseller book, How Not to Die and shared its simple Daily Dozen eating guidelines.

With over 3,000 references to the nutrition and medical literature, it’s the best scientific advice for healthy living.

The 10 Evidence-Based Foods

From the book’s 3,000 references, come the ten recommended foods (or groups thereof) in the Daily Dozen, listed below (the other two two daily things are healthy beverages, e.g. water/tea; and exercise).

Over 20 Whole Food Ingredients In Every Meal

You won’t find another meal product that delivers the same benefits in a single serving.

Each meal pack has 20 to 30 whole plant-based ingredients inside, more than any other meal on the market.

And when you consider that LeafSide meals ONLY use the ingredients shown from nutrition science to provide you with the maximum health benefits, nothing else even comes close.

...and Don't Forget the Special Nutrients

In addition to helping you check off the Daily Dozen (DD) foods, every LeafSide meal has effective amounts of at least three of the following five DD special nutrients, combined in ways that taste great:

Obtained only through diet, and most abundant in mushrooms, ergothioneine is a newly found antioxidant that our cells have specific receptors for. It may represent a new vitamin that can uniquely enter a cell’s nucleus and mitochondria, concentrating itself wherever there’s high oxidative stress, like the eyes.56

Lignan Compounds

Richest in flaxseeds, lignans may reduce the risk of breast cancer, and prolong the life of those affected. Lignans may also slow the growth of prostate cancer and decrease cholesterol with daily consumption. 7

Turmeric + Black Pepper

With thousands of studies, turmeric has proven itself as one of the most powerful anti-cancer, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory substances known. It has also been shown to effectively treat rheumatoid arthritis better than the leading drug of choice, and may be effective against osteoarthritis and other inflammatory conditions. 8910

Legumes

“Legumes may be the most important predictor of survival for older people around the world.”

Researchers studied long-term eating habits of the longest living people from different continents. They found that the single most beneficial food group was legumes and beans: a 7-8% reduction mortality risk for every 20 grams of daily consumption. 111213

Ready for the best health of your life?

Tasty, filling, effortless, on-demand, go-anywhere meals following the best nutrition science — LeafSide checks all the boxes. Just click to your optimal health and lifestyle.

LeafSide’s website and meals are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease; are not intended to be a substitute or replacement for medical treatment; and have not been evaluated by the FDA.